Falling
by Pharies
Summary: Set after the Battle of Hogwarts. Voldemort won that battle. Harry went into hiding. Hermione is on the run. Will the war every truly end? No pairings.


_-One-_

It was welling up inside her. The pressure to get the best grades; smart. The pressure to be more than average; pretty. The pressure to help save the world; hero.

She knew that the last one wasn't normal for her age, but she couldn't help it. It's the role she had been cast into, and she couldn't get away. Not by normal means anyways.

And people say that things get better with age. Tell that to people dealing with a war.

 _-Two-_

It was coming to a head. Curses and defensive spells were flying around her shield. The snake was it. She had to get the snake. This could all be over if that snake was gone.

And then it was. Head cut off, and she could stop her search. She could do nothing else but blink for a few seconds before she realized that she was still in the middle of a war zone.

She watched as friend after friend fell. And as enemy lines dwindled, she kept moving. She had to find him. _Harry_ ; _the key to it all._

- _Three-_

The amber liquid swirled in her glass. She watched as the scotch she had ordered continued to move after her hand stopped. It had been five years.

Five years since Harry disappeared from Hogwarts.

Five years since Death Eaters had taken over wizarding England.

Five years since she went into hiding.

She downed the rest of her drink, left a few dollars to cover her tab, and walked out of the bar she had been sitting in for the past four hours. No one knew that her pin-straight blonde hair wasn't natural. No one knew that her eyes were actually a dark amber color. No one but the two she had run with.

- _Four-_

They had found them. It had been nearly ten years since they fled, and they had been found. If the remaining members of the Order could find them in America, then nowhere was safe. It was only a matter of time before the Dark Lord found them too.

It had only been the three of them for so long. Now there were ten of them, and all she could think was, ' _Thank Merlin, Harry's safe.'_

- _Five-_

Less than a year. They had been together less than a year. But she knew that they would be found. She had been preparing for it. So had Harry. He was really done with hiding and running, just trying to survive. But he wasn't the only one.

They were all tired of running. Tonks had Teddy to protect. Bill, Charlie, George and Ron didn't want to lose any more of their family. Luna wanted the darkness to just be gone. Draco wanted freedom. And Hermione wanted to start living again.

So when she heard footsteps outside of the protected area that weren't any of her group, she was up in a moment, ready to fight. She went around quietly waking everyone. Teddy was the one she was most concerned about. He had just started working with her to hone his magic without a wand, since they couldn't get him one. She had at least gotten him to cast shields.

"Teddy, come on. It's time for you to hide really well, like we've been practicing." The boy, who looked so much like Remus it sometimes hurt them all to look at him, woke, startled, and pulled his shoes on. Once he was hidden under the floorboards, Hermione very carefully cast in order to see who was outside their place.

Several Death Eater masks could be seen. Behind them, the Dark Lord. She looked around her group, they each nodded in turn. Harry stayed in the middle of them. No one needed to know that he was there just yet.

As she let the shield down slowly, each person cast their own personal shields in order to move better. The walls around them were blasted away. Jets of green light started soon after. Everyone ducked. Half casting shields, the other casting the same curse back. Hermione had been practicing silent casting of everything, including the killing curse.

It was either kill or be killed. She hated it.

She cast three in rapid succession of each other, taking out two Death Eaters. She fell back slightly to cast a _Protego_ , holding until they stopped throwing curses at her. Tonks touched her hand. Their circle had shrunk to protect Teddy, still under the floorboards, and Harry, who no one realized was there. Yet.

Hermione weakened an area right in front of her and Tonks and watched as several curses left before fixing the weak spot. One more Death Eater badly injured. She touched Tonks's hand with her free hand and waited for the feeling of Bill touching the small of her back signaling that everyone was ready for her to drop the shield yet again. She took a deep breath and let the defense fall as she threw up a shield around her and Harry. She watched as everyone moved away to dual two, sometimes three, at a time. They moved in pairs. Hermione slowly turned to Harry.

She cast a silencing charm.

"We have to move, now." His face was set. He might be ready for this to be over, but as of right now he just wanted to get Teddy to safety. He had promised Tonks. They both had.

Hermione tapped her foot four times before moving slowly to Harry, constantly letting the shield fall and recasting until she was standing right next to him. Teddy had moved the floor board just enough to grab her ankle. She let the shield fall once more before turning slightly and taking the two with her just outside of the town they had been hiding in.

Teddy stood, she grabbed both of them tightly and apparated again, landing several miles away. She continued to do this, back tracking every so often to throw anyone who might be following them off, before she stopped in Maine.

- _Six-_

If she slept with one eye open before, now it was worse. She didn't dare look in the mirror. The smart had taken over the pretty. She had cut her hair short to maintain better. She looked like she had been beaten most days due to lack of sleep. Her nails were bitten to nubs from her not realizing she was doing it while reading. She was teaching Teddy, now nearly thirteen.

After being found once, they didn't stay in one place long enough to really have an escape plan. Her DA coins were helpful though. If the person that she had given one to died, their coin became useless, and she was notified. So far only Bill's had signaled this after their close escape nearly two years ago.

She was also able to track where everyone had gotten to after that fight. She waited nearly a month before she tried to find them though. She had to be certain that they hadn't been captured. Only Luna was though. But there was still hope that she was alright, though it was small.

They all traveled separately in small groups when they moved every day. They dare not move at night; it was too expected. And they avoided wizarding communities at all costs; and sparsely populated Muggle areas. It was safer for them to travel into a large town. No one realized the comings and goings of people as easily.

Hermione didn't understand how they were able to do anything at all. They were always tired; the only person getting enough sleep was Teddy. They slept in shifts, like she, Ron, and Harry had when they were trying to find all the Horcruxes.

They were making their way slowing back the UK. They were going to be found one way or another. They were ready to fight.

Teddy could even fight as Hermione had been teaching him how to channel his magic even more.

- _Seven-_

Hermione, though nearly fifteen years older, felt like no time had passed as she dodged curses and through defensive spells. She had disarmed at least three Death Eaters, but she had had to kill every single one she could because that's all she could do to stay alive. Teddy was covering her and Harry. They moved as one through the dozens of Death Eaters. Even after all this time, Voldemort hadn't been able to get many more people to join his cause outside of Europe. Americans were more accepting of things, though that might have something to do with their smaller wizarding population. Asia had its own issues, but was able to keep him out.

Harry showed no mercy to those who tried to take his small group down. George had been saved by Draco, who had broken from Charlie and Ron. Tonks hadn't been able to go with them as she kept firing hexes and curses trying to take down as many Death Eaters as possible. Eventually she was surrounded, though she didn't give up. She sent on well-placed killing curse as she was hit in the back.

Hermione felt her DA coin signal that one of her family had fallen. With Teddy throwing shield after shield up as she and Harry shot curses he couldn't, she knew that she could take out Death Eaters who weren't paying her any mind.

As this trio circled with each other to make sure all angles were covered, she faced one enemy with her wand while her other hand periodically shot small jinxes toward them. She would throw a killing curse out, hoping to catch them off guard as they blocked a jinx. She got a few, and they kept moving through the falling bodies. Since there was more Death Eaters than there were Order Members, it was mostly them that littered the ground. There were a few people that they weren't expecting to show up; mostly thought to be dead. Ginny had been one of those people, and she stuck to Charlie when Ron ran after Draco.

Knowing that others had survived all these years gave the others hope. But as Hermione fired curses, defensive spells, and jinxes, she lost track of where she was. She _felt_ the jet of light coming toward them and just barely moved out of its way. Her arm was grazed, and it started bleeding. She still threw some less harmful things out with that hand, but she was slowly only able to use her wand. She couldn't even stop to try and heal it. As they neared where the Dark Lord had set himself up, she lost her footing, not being able to concentrate fully through the loss of blood.

Teddy caught her arm, and cast a shield around the three of them, which Harry left to finally put an end to this war. It had waged on too long.

Teddy carefully tried to tend to Hermione as Harry and the Dark Lord battled. Hermione watched through the shield Teddy continuously cast while he looked through her beaded bag for blood replenishing potion. She smiled at his efforts as Harry and Voldemort dueled. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Hermione! Don't do that!" Teddy shouted at her, startling her out of her doze. "This is it, right?" She looked at the potion in his hand, smiled and nodded. She drank the potion as he started to try and heal her arm. It only healed slightly. He found another bottle, and gave it to her.

"You'll need," she started, needing to take a breath. She didn't realize how much blood she had lost. "The antidote for this hex." She paused again. "It's a very light purple, almost clear. It should be" _breath_ "next to the polyjuice potion." When he pulled out the vial she was talking about, she nodded and took that one was well. She knew it was too late when the pain she felt in her arm only went away slightly. Teddy tried to heal her again, and this time to wound became noticeably smaller as she looked out of the shield. Harry was still throwing curses at Voldemort, throwing a killing curse every few, hoping that one would hit. She smiled as she closed her eyes again. Once the poison hit all her blood, she would die. The antidote would just hold it off for a little bit. She opened her eyes.

Teddy continued to shield them as more people, friend and foe, fell around them. People weren't concerned with the two of them as Harry and the Dark Lord continued. Harry just barely missing the killing curse, throwing his own just before Voldemort had. There hadn't been enough time to shield or move.

' _It's over. There will finally be peace,'_ she thought as she closed her eyes once more, not having the energy to open them again as Teddy called her name. She fell. Fell into darkness. A darkness that had been chasing her for far too long and she couldn't hold it off any longer.

 _I was going through my folders and found this, which I had thought I posted. Apparently I had not. So here it is._


End file.
